It Ain't The Years Honey, It's The Mileage.

My boys' favorite movies are the Indiana Jones movies.  They love them.  They can watch them 10 times in a row.  In fact my six year old son believes he is named after Harrison Ford, as he is Harrison too.  Who am I to tell him otherwise :) 

property of paramount pictures

Regardless, the culture of that movie has seeped into every aspect of our lives.  I have seen each one so many times that I could probably recite each one by heart.  When I got the invitation to my 20th high school reunion one line that Indiana says in Raiders of the Lost Ark came to my mind. "It's not the years honey, it's the mileage."  Ain't that the truth?  The mileage on this old girl got me to thinking about what I thought was important in high school.  It is almost laughable and certainly embarrassing now. 

Here are the ten things I wish I could tell my high school self:

1.Having cool clothes is a joke.  Yoga pants and running shoes are ACTUALLY comfortable.

2. Having a cool car is totally impractical.  They do not get good gas mileage and it is hard to clean up crushed cheerios and goldfish from the nooks and crannies because you cannot climb in the car with a full size vacuum cleaner.

3. Having big hair no longer dictates how popular you are.  If you have big hair now it only means that you did not have enough time to comb out your morning bed head before shit hit the fan and you day had to begin.

4. Having a bag of cafeteria Cheetos isn't considered a quick lunch anymore.  It means that you are in the ER with you kid and have to scrounge up dinner from the hospital cafeteria with the loose change you collect from the floor of your "not so cool" car. 

5. Getting a high school parking pass no longer is a perk of being involved in cheerleading.  The only perk now is the bad back, tennis elbow, and shotty knees you got from throwing people into the air when you were 17.

6. The leadership experience that Student Council provided unfortunately does not come in handy when you are the only adult in a room full of people who are three feet tall.  Maybe The United States Army's Basic Training would have been a better option.

7. Getting alcohol on the weekends no longer means going to a keg party way out in the boonies so the cops don't find you.  It means buying a case of cheap wine and cracking one open at 3:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and sitting in the driveway watching your kids beat the snot out of one another in the front lawn while a cop drives by on their patrol and you wave.

8. Sleeping in no longer means getting up at 11:00am on a Saturday.  It means getting to sleep until 6:45am on a Saturday. 

9.   Babysitting for money is underrated. You will never make as much money at your job at Subway as you do getting to play with kids for a couple hours then getting watch TV after they go do bed.  I only realize this now when I have to pay a sitter $12 and hour to hang out with my children. 

10.  Not having to pay for anything (like your car, your phone, your Target Card bill) means that your life is E-A-S-Y!   Shut up and stop complaining.